


"Why Hueningie Should Let Me Chop His Ankles", a presentation by Choi Yeonjun

by shallowheart



Series: ??????????????? [5]
Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Baby Choi Beomgyu, Beanpole Huening Kai, Crying Choi Soobin, Fluff and Crack, I think I just love yeonkai idk, Kang Taehyun - Freeform, M/M, Squishy Choi Yeonjun, This is literally just sweet, but anyway, u kno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24493129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shallowheart/pseuds/shallowheart
Summary: Kai has gotten taller. Much taller. Much, much, much taller.Yeonjun has other ideas.
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Choi Soobin/Kang Taehyun, Choi Yeonjun/Huening Kai
Series: ??????????????? [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677568
Comments: 13
Kudos: 125
Collections: YEONJUNEEZ recommendations





	"Why Hueningie Should Let Me Chop His Ankles", a presentation by Choi Yeonjun

**Author's Note:**

> I HAVE NO EXPLANATION EXCEPT THAT SAVI IS AN ENABLER-

" _ENOUGH_ ," Yeonjun screeches, "I've _HAD IT!_ "

Kai looks down at him, lost, and slowly puts his hand down from where it floats above Yeonjun's head. Taehyun's hand meets Beomgyu's head much softer than intended, and Soobin sits up and almost brains himself on Taehyun's elbow out of surprise.

"Hyung?" Kai gapes as Yeonjun puffs his cheeks prettily and stomps towards the door of the practice room and walks out. "Where are you going? I was just joking-"

"He's done it now," Taehyun says somberly, "This'll be ugly."

Soobin bursts into tears. Kai watches, stunned, as Beomgyu shushes him and goes to hug him, "There, there. We'll make sure to give him a proper burial, and visit all the time."

"What," it's meant to be a question, but it's more of a general statement of Kai's mental state at this moment. Taehyun sighs, standing up and putting a hand on Kai's shoulder.

"You went too far," Taehyun says slowly, as if Kai were a child being told what he did wrong, "We've protected you too long, it's out of our hands now."

"H-he's only a _baby_ ," Soobin blubbers, crawling to wrap his arms around Kai's ankles, "Hueningie, I-I'll _miss y-o-ou!_ "

"Yah," Yeonjun snaps blandly from the doorframe, laptop clutched under one arm and a straight-up _projector_ under the other, chest rising up and down quickly. "I'm not going to kill him. PD-nim doesn't have enough connections to make it disappear."

" _That's the only reason_ _?_ " Kai squawks, before squinting as Yeonjun sits down and starts fiddling with wires, "Uh, Hyung-"

"Shut," Yeonjun interrupts, plugging something into another thing and Kai doesn't know how he's doing that with his fingers, ow. He knew Yeonjun was flexible, but are thumbs supposed to turn that way?

Soobin stands up, tears and snot having magically vanished, "Wait, is it _that_ , Yeonjun-hyung?"

The noncommital grunt Yeonjun lets out just has Soobin's face twisting like someone put a bug up to it. Surprisingly, Kai, Beomgyu, and Taehyun all turn to look between the two of them with eerie synchronization, which gives Kai some relief that he's finally not the only person who doesn't know what's going on. There's a solid thirty seconds of inscrutable staring in which Taehyun and Kai approach Soobin and Beomgyu in a move not dissimilar to an Old West standoff before Yeonjun lets out a victorious little noise and the lights drop abruptly, leaving the projector's rapidly deepening light as the only bright spot in the room.

Almost against his better judgement, Kai sits down facing the wall where the projection gains color, squinting at the letters until he can finally read them.

" _Why Hueningie Should Let Me Chop His Angles-Ankles,"_ Beomgyu reads out loud, flubbing the end of the sentence in an example of illiteracy that Kai can _feel_ Taehyun protesting against from next to him. " _By Choi Yeonjun_. Wow."

"Is he serious about this?" Taehyun asks, wrapping his hand around Beomgyu's wrist and pulling him down into his lap.

It's Soobin who answers, voice the picture of exasperation even as he sniffs hard and leans on Taehyun's side opposite Kai himself, "Dreadfully. This is version six point three, I think?"

"Seven point two," Yeonjun corrects absentmindedly, pulling out notecards from his sleeve (Kai's pretty sure they weren't there before, and he feels a little faint at seeing there are things written on both sides of every card), "I made some edits a couple days ago."

"What is this, Yeonjun-hyung?" Kai blurts out, waving an arm towards the screen. Yeonjun runs a hand through his hair and pushes it back, which makes Kai's stomach flip for a different reason. The light of the projector works unfairly well against Yeonjun's soft cheeks and sharp profile, and Kai is tempted to take it as a personal offence.

"I think you can read," Yeonjun clicks his tongue, wetting his lips, "But I'll be nice for now. _This_ , as you put it, is a presentation that's been a year in the making."

"Closer to a year and a half," Soobin provides helpfully, "I started seeing him work on it since pre-debut."

"But what is it _for_?"

Yeonjun stares blankly at him, "The good of humanity? I don't know what answer you're looking for, honestly."

Kai's mouth clicks shut as Yeonjun clears his throat, clicker appearing in his hand and turning the title slide into a picture of Kai as a _baby_ that he definitely hadn't given him. Yeonjun had spoken to Kai's _parents_ for this. 

"Now, as we all know, this is our dearest NingNing's baby face, not to be confused with his babyface."

A chorus of nods from the trio to Kai's left, and Kai finds himself nodding in tandem. He feels like the motion is causing the brain cells to fall out of his head faster.

"And this," _Click_. "Is NingNing's babyface from two years ago. Similar, but not the same. And then we have _this_ -"

A selca of Kai's from one of their music show wins last year. He winces at the blurriness before Yeonjun pokes a finger into the picture, in line with where one of Kai's moles would be under the makeup, "Debut. He has his babyface here, correct? Everything is good, he's around my height―Small enough for head pats. All is right."

"But," Yeonjun flips some cards and peeks at the writing, brow creasing as his lips push into a plush pout, "When our comeback rolls around..."

This time it's a picture from an unofficial fanmeeting―Kai's laughing, and Yeonjun is standing near him. When Yeonjun doesn't do anything for a few seconds except pout harder and point almost aggressively at the projection again, Kai tries a little harder to see what he's trying to say.

"He's...smiling more?" Beomgyu shrugs, pursing his lips and causing his dimples to pop at the corners of his mouth. Soobin isn't any better, saying nothing save a few unintelligible cooed sentences including "Huening" that Kai doesn't want to hear.

Taehyun, predictably, sighs and puts them out of their misery, "He's taller. Taller than Hyung."

Yeonjun makes a vitriolic pleased sound, pointing at Taehyun and nodding violently, "And so the problem comes out! But that's not all! Look at _this!_ "

Yet another photo. This is from Eternity, a solo close-up of Kai's face on the bus photoshoot that makes the tips of his ears flush a light red, "Did you have to pick one that was so close...?"

"In this picture, he..." Yeonjun turns to face the projection and freezes. They're left waiting as Yeonjun stares at it for maybe thirty seconds in dead silence, nearly unblinking, before turning back around and burying his face in the cards. "Uhm, h-he-this picture stands out because a key feature is missing!"

"Feature...?" Kai squints at the picture. He doesn't think anything in particular about his face is _gone_ , and he would be the first to know, "What do you-"

" _BABYFACE_!" Yeonjun squawks with inexplicable mortification, and with a click the picture is gone and in place of it is a slide with a single bullet point. "On to point number one of why this means I should chop off his ankles!"

"I really feel like that's disproportionate-" Taehyun attempts to interject.

"Nobody cares about your feelings," two (deep) offended gasps. Yeonjun amends, "They care about your feelings, but I don't. So shut up and listen: Number one: Moa miss back when he was tiny!"

"They say that about all of us," Beomgyu complains, "They say that about Soobin-ah, even, and he was never tiny to begin with."

Soobin waves a fist at Beomgyu as Yeonjun scrunches his nose, "All of us shmall of us, does it look like that matters? Reason number two..."

"It's harder to fit in the cars now," Yeonjun bites his lip, "The rides can get uncomfortable-"

"I didn't know that bothered you, Hyung," Kai exclaims, "When we're in the car, you always-"

"This point is invalid by virtue of you not using personal space, Yeonjun-hyung," Taehyun deadpans, "Do you suddenly want to pretend like you didn't make Soobin-hyung and Hyuka your booster seats?"

Yeonjun's brow twitches, "Anyways...Number three: His blankets barely fit him, and he doesn't fit properly in his bed."

He stares at them, daring them to say something, and Soobin raises his hands, "Hey, no complaints on this one."

"No, this one's accurate."

"No problems from me."

"It does get a bit hard to fit my legs under the comforter now..."

"Oh," Yeonjun blinks, "Okay, uh, reason number four: He can't be the little spoon anymore."

An explosion of protests. They all yell over each other, and Kai has to use his own weight and Beomgyu's to make sure Taehyun doesn't stand up to do something he'll regret.

" _OKAY_ ," Yeonjun calls after a while, "Calm down! I wasn't sure on this one anyway, I just-"

Yeonjun goes quiet again as Taehyun spits out, "- _Can't_ _be little spoon my ass_."

"Now now," Soobin frowns, "Let's stay polite."

"He's stayed the little spoon for most of us," Beomgyu muses, "I don't know why you said this one."

"I thought-" Yeonjun coughs, giving Kai an apologetic(???) look, "Nevermind. Number five...It's harder to pat his head."

"Hyung, you're not an ant," Kai snorts, "I'm not _that_ tall."

"My arm _hurts_ ," Yeonjun wails, "You and Soobin-ah are a pair of Giraffes! Have some empathy!"

Taehyun raises his hand, "Yeonjun-hyung, if Soobin-hyung is taller, then why doesn't he have one of these too?"

"I-Well," Yeonjun gulps, "Because he's not the maknae? Whatever, number six: Our hoodies don't fit him anymore-"

" _Our_?" Beomgyu straight-up laughs in Yeonjun's face, "Hyung, he never steals _our_ clothes; only yours. What are you even talking about anymore?"

Yeonjun seethes and looks through his notes with barely-restrained fury as Soobin ponders, "Come to think of it, the rest of the slides have sort of the same theme. Most of them are things that Hyuka _used_ to do-"

"But for Yeonjun-hyung only," Taehyun chimes in, eyes flashing dangerously, "Isn't that curious?"

Kai once again feels like he's the butt of a joke he keeps missing, "Huh?"

"What are you implying," Yeonjun grinds his teeth, "There's nothing-"

"What's the next one, then?" Taehyun challenges, leaning forward and causing Beomgyu to fall off his lap with a protesting yelp. "Go on, Hyung."

Yeonjun looks down at his notes for a split second as Beomgyu whines, scooting back to plaster himself next to Soobin, and Kai is even more confused as Yeonjun pales, "It's..."

"I remember!" Soobin gasps, "Wasn't it about calling us cool, Hyung?"

"Cool?" Kai frowns, rolling the word around in his head, "Yeonjun-hyung, I think they have a point."

Yeonjun, in a demonstration of maturity, throws his notecards in the air, scattering them around the practice room. " _FINE!_ Whatever! I'm leaving!"

"Bye," Beomgyu waves at Yeonjun's retreating form as Kai picks up one of the notecards. 

_Number Eighty-Three: Perfect_ _Height For Forehead Kisses Without Ankles,_ followed by a frankly impressive rant on why that's beneficial for them as a whole. But what catches his attention the most is the little scribbles in the corners, Yeonjun talking to himself and questioning his own presentation. _Does he even want forehead kisses???_ _Do **I** even want to GIVE him forehead kisses??? Discuss with Soobin_.

"This is..." Kai tries to find a descriptor.

"Hella gay," Taehyun provides, eyebrows climbing up his forehead as he flips through more of the cards, "Doesn't seem like Hyung realized that, though."

" _You're_ hella gay," Kai counters. Taehyun tilts his head, baffled, and points at Soobin and Beomgyu wordlessly, "Yeah, I don't know where that came from. Sorry."

"I'm surprised you're this calm, though," Taehyun leans back, "I mean, if my crush was literally panicking over me, I wouldn't-"

" _Crush?_ " Soobin and Kai exclaim at the same time, both equally confused for very different reasons.

"What do you mean, crush-"

"Taehyunnie? Who's this _crush?_ Are we-"

"-he's pretty, but-"

"-Do we need to talk? I-"

"-Really don't think it's like that-"

"-breaking up with us-"

"-just a friend, right? _Right?-"_

"I think," Beomgyu interrupts, putting a hand on Soobin's face, "that Taehyunnie was using a metaphor, and Kai-yah needs to reassess himself. Right?"

Taehyun lowers his fists, "Yes, thank you, Hyung."

Beomgyu beams at him, and Kai kind of wants to say _no, no thank you, I could've spent a little more time in denial_. But he doesn't know how true that is anymore, what with the literal mound of evidence that there's something a little less than platonic between him and Yeonjun. _Yeonjun_ , who last week almost choked on a bag of marshmallows, who legitimately barks at them so they get him water in the middle of the night, who almost stabbed Beomgyu with a plastic spoon for stealing his pizza crusts.

But also Yeonjun who feeds him breakfast in the mornings, who helps him where he struggles and tells him how good he's doing, who pets his hair and plays along with his skits and calls him _Little Yeonjun_ with a smile. Yeonjun who's beautiful and caring and dependable, who tries so hard and is the best role model anyone could ask for, who is as free with his praises as with his kindness and dedication. Yeonjun who's as easy to love as breathing. And, Kai figures, he's a little tired of choking on nothing.

"Oh," Kai says, having a little epiphany, " _I'm_ hella gay."

"Congratulations," Taehyun says flatly, but his eyes are happy as he gives Kai a small smile, "You figured it out. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

"Repress my feelings and try to move on?" Kai offers.

Taehyun puts his palm on his face, "Try again."

"...Confess?" Kai hesitates, "Isn't that skipping a few steps?"

"I think you already went through those," Taehyun rolls his eyes, "Just go and make Hyung realize all of _these_ -"

Taehyun extends an arm, and Soobin drops a handful of notecards between his fingers, "-Aren't exactly bromance things."

"Right," Kai nods, "I can do that. That's easy. I mean, it's not, but I can do it."

Silence. A few seconds of it, before Beomgyu speaks up:

"Well? Hyung is probably in his room right now..."

"Oh, Right! I'll go-" Kai scrambles onto his feet, waddling towards the door with their laughter at his heels. He stumbles through the halls, and right as he's in front of Yeonjun's door, he realizes-

 _What will I even say?_ It seems awful to even think of just being upfront about it; Without Yeonjun realizing what everyone else already did (a fact that makes him feel like his hair is going to fall out) this not-even-a-plan would fall apart into awkwardness. He feels unprepared, and wonders if he should've just said he wasn't ready, or literally any other excuse-

"Kai-yah?" Yeonjun's voice interrupts his musing, eyes barely peeking through a crack in the door, "...are you here to laugh at me?"

"Hyung!" Kai jumps, "Yes-I mean, no! How did you know I was here?"

Yeonjun sighs, fingers drumming on the edge of the door, "You're...tall. I could hear your footsteps."

Kai flushes, remembering the point, "Ah, I see...Uhm, Hyung? Could I maybe-talk to you? In your room?"

Yeonjun's eyes narrow. Kai stands there, sweating, for a few seconds before Yeonjun huffs and opens the door, "Yeah, sure. I've been pretty mean to you today, huh?"

"That's...part of what I want to talk about," Kai mumbles, shuffling into the bedroom and almost jumping out of his skin when Yeonjun closes the door behind him.

Yeonjun licks his lips, scratching the back of his neck, "Really?"

"Hyung," Kai begins, "I read a couple of your cards..."

Yeonjun pales so quickly that Kai worries for his health, then equally as fast turns a painful shade of red. But he stays quiet, instead moving back to sit on his bed.

"Yeah, so I just wanted-" Kai breathes in deeply through his nose, and blurts out before he can stop himself- "Yeonjun-hyung, are you aware you have a crush on me?"

"A _what?!_ " Yeonjun goes to stand, but his foot catches on the smooth flooring and sends him tumbling down to lean against the bed. "What in the-"

"You made dozens of notecards about things you missed about me, Hyung," Kai insists, standing his ground. He made his bed, now he has to lie in it. " _Dozens_. And how many slides was that presentation?"

"Ninety-seven," Yeonjun answers automatically, "Wait, that doesn't mean-"

"It doesn't?" Kai scrunches his nose, "What does it mean, then?"

"I-" Yeonjun coughs, "Well, it means something."

"Tell you what, Hyung," Kai says, sitting down in front of Yeonjun and leaning forward until their noses are almost touching. Yeonjun leans back as far as he can, redness in his skin turning a more flattering pink, "If you can promise me that right now, in this instant, all of your thoughts are one hundred percent platonic, I'll agree with you."

Yeonjun doesn't even respond- His eyes are glued to a point low on Kai's face, and he's not moving anymore. Kai lets his lips split into a small smirk, and Yeonjun gulps.

"I-I-" Yeonjun stutters after a while, "...You might...be right..."

" _Oh thank god_ ," Kai's face breaks into a relieved grin, moving down to rest his forehead on Yeonjun's stiff shoulder as he gulps down air, "Oh, that was terrifying, Hyung. Thank you so, _so_ much for realizing."

"Huh?" Yeonjun blinks, before relaxing and pulling Kai closer with an arm around his waist, "You scared _me_. Where did all that confidence come from?"

"No idea," Kai breathes, "I kind of wanted to throw myself into your trashcan, just now. Can you feel how fast my heart is beating, Hyung? Pure adrenaline."

"You sure it's just adrenaline?" Yeonjun teases, pressing his cheek against the side of Kai's head. The teasing is slightly diminished by the fact Kai is worried Yeonjun will get a stroke if his heart continues like that, feeling it under his palm where his hands rose up on Yeonjun's chest.

"Pretty sure," Kai says, and then he can't say anymore, because he's a little busy putting his mouth where his heart is.

**Author's Note:**

> h a ha aha ah,,,,,,,,,,,h a haa haa ......SO can I get some more writer friends that will help me make better decisions pls contact me in the comments  
> also <3 1312 <3 ACAB <3 BLM


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